A dangerous raid

If the Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, took a calculated risk in ordering his troops across an international border to kill a Marxist insurgent in Ecuador, he did not get his sums right. What the Colombian commandos claim to have uncovered on three laptops seized in the raid could have wider repercussions than the assassination of Raúl Reyes, the senior commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) who was the original target.

Colombia now claims the Farc rebels were planning to make a "dirty bomb", after expressing interest in acquiring 110 pounds of uranium. Colombia also accuses the Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa, of planning changes in his military leadership to accommodate Farc. Bogotá also claims the guerrilla army received more than $300m in payments from the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. As a result, there is a full-blown crisis in the Andean region. Over 6,000 Venezuelan and 3,000 Ecuadorean troops were yesterday heading for their respective borders with Colombia; Mr Correa began a five-nation tour of the continent to lobby support against a premeditated violation of his country's sovereignty; and Mr Uribe vowed to denounce Mr Chávez in the international criminal court for "sponsoring and financing genocide".

Ecuador has more reason to be angry with Mr Uribe than Venezuela. This was not a raid conducted in conditions of hot pursuit but a planned breach of an international border. The attraction of killing the number two in the rebel army also outweighed the interests of 12 hostages whose release Ecuador appeared to be on the point of securing. Among them was the former presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt, who is reported to be gravely ill. Reyes was the only point of contact for foreign governments seeking to obtain the release of their nationals. An official from Bill Clinton's administration had a clandestine meeting with him in Costa Rica in 1998.

Of all the documents found on the laptops, the claim that Mr Chávez was bankrolling insurgents categorised around the world as terrorists could be the most damaging - if proved. There is no love in Venezuela for the Farc rebels, who fund their campaign with drug money and kidnapping. Trying to obtain the release of hostages is one thing, but covertly funding them is quite another for a president suffering a decline in his popularity. Mr Uribe may take personal satisfaction for killing a leading member of an organisation that murdered his father. But he is also a head of state whose responsibility is to bring Colombia's civil war to an end. Quite how he advanced that objective yesterday is, to put it mildly, unclear.